Proving that failure doesn’t have half the stigma it used to, the head of Merrill Lynch, Stan O’Neal, was ousted with a humiliating US$161m in his pocket to go away and think about how his company managed to lose US$7.9bn playing around in complicated debt instruments. I imagine it would be hard to be introspective when someone has just handed you a cheque that has 3 commas and 9 numbers for a job badly done…Imagine if the figure if Merrill’s hadn’t decided to retain his severance…
